The Edge
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: In a world where vampires are masters and humans their slaves, Lord Cullen, fascinated by a mysterious and mute young woman, buys her to be his plaything. Warning: Slavery, Dark themes, Non-Consensual.


_"...of eyes that see things much too far, of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world."_

**- Joanne Harris**

* * *

******f.e.a.r.** a.n.d f.r.e.e.s.i.a.  


On her thin, white thigh they had tattooed a lace girdle. She had a pointed, little face, a short mop of honey-colored curls. She did not smile so much as twitch up the corners of her lips nervously, her hands did a great deal of fluttering, resting now on her sharply-etched hipbones or her beaded collar or on her small, exposed breasts. She was perhaps fourteen, if that, pretty in a patches-and-ragamuffin way. Big eyes, glazed with glitter and fear.

When he ran his tongue over her lips, he could taste the iron of her terror, feel the ragged thump of her quick-beating heart. She was as naked before him in her mind as she was in her body - in a moment he could see the worn face and wide eyes of the mother she had been torn away from, hear the sizzle of the heated iron before they branded her breast with it.

He passed her by, her smile still locked on her face, like a poorly-assembled jigsaw. Behind him they hustled her back into her glass cage, a disappointing doll.

The proprietor sensed his mood. "We have other wares of course, m'lord."

He smoothed a fold of his brocaded waistcoat. "Of course. As I told you I was looking for something fresh and pretty."

"And so they all were, m'lord," the cringing creature hastened to assure him. "All virgins and not a one of them over sixteen."

He was too polite to yawn in the half-caste's face but he let his disinterest lace his voice as he said. "They were all soiled for me." He did not offer an explanation, though he understood that behind his back the slaves who assisted in the handling of the wares were throwing each other puzzled glances. The girls all offered for his pleasure had all been young and untouched. _By men perhaps, _he thought."If you have nothing purer for me..."

"I might have, m'lord," the proprietor offered hesitantly. "If you were willing to stay a moment? Though she is not perhaps quite what you might be looking for..."

He glanced at his pocket-watch, an elaborate affair of curlicued gold and jade. _Not _his taste of course, a present from Alice who had been passing through a Baroque phase at the time. "I am not expected at the club for a half-a-hour yet," he acknowledged. "Very well. You might show me the last one." Absently, he accepted a cup of blood from a bowing slave.

They brought the girl to him, instead of ushering him through yet another interminable allée of glass cages. He scented her from afar before he even saw her. _Freesia_, he thought. She was a small, slight thing, light-footed and with a cloud of mahogany hair. There was a looseness about the way she walked, as though she was as light and free as a feather, that he had not seen in any of the other girls. Around her feet were bound silver anklets, with tiny bells that chimed as she walked.

"She _is_ a trifle older than you commanded, to be sure," the proprietor broke in nervously. "Seventeen..."

She kept her eyes down when they put her before him. He grasped her chin firmly and tilted her face up, so he could study it better. It was a heart-faced face, a seventeen-year-old girl's unlined face. A very self-possessed young woman, to be sure, he could not read any of her thoughts. She had cool, dark eyes, as grave as though she was studying him rather than the other way around, as though the slave had become the master. _Intriguing. _

He bent his head but she tasted only of herself, of some fruit-flavored balm, when their lips met. He could not read her at all. He was fascinated from his long-seated boredom - not merely restraining himself to a single taste he began to explore her, to invade her. He curled his hand in her hair, tugging her head back painfully so that the vulnerable line of her throat was exposed to him. Unable to restrain himself, he bit her lip, sucking furiously at the sweetness of her blood...

The prongs stung him just in time. The prongs were the electrically charged whips kept to restrain unruly customers - or discipline recalcitrant slaves with. "M'lord," the proprietor began uneasily, "you know our rules. Blood is not to be tasted until the matter of payment is raised, a down deposit..."

"Of course." He felt as though he had risen from a cloud, deliciously hazy. With an effort he shook himself out of it. _I could not read her at all. _"What's your name, girl?"

She regarded him calmly and once again the proprietor broke in. "With all due respect, m'lord, she cannot speak. She was brought to us mute. Of course she has been trained, she is not deaf and learns quickly - but she cannot speak. We think she never has in all her life, though of course we know little of it."

The warehouse specialized in wares of the delicate and perishable sort - beautiful young girls and boys, hand-picked from the great meat and blood farms, to be playthings in the boudoirs and bedrooms of the rich.

"She is a beauty. A credit to your establishment." Even to his own self, his voice sounded ragged as though he had not managed to master himself yet. He made a great show of glancing at his pocket-watch. There was still time left to reach the club. "Have her packaged and sent to my townhouse. You will broach the matter of payment with my steward."

"Of course, m'lord." The proprietor sketched a bow, his smile oozing oily triumph. "It shall be done as you wish."

He nodded and with a sweep of his velvet cloak, took his leave. He knew they would start whispering as soon as he left, of how the young Lord Cullen had finally lost his much-vaunted composure, even though for only a moment. And why, whence, wherefore? Oh, strange to say, over a bit of a girl. Let them laugh, he thought without the faintest trace of resentment. The girl looked as though she might be worth it.

* * *

They talked over her head as they bathed her, as though she was deaf as well as dumb. They scrubbed her with cakes of honey-and-almond soap and left her skin pink and stinging. They gossiped freely of the young lord's extravagant wealth and of his equally extravagant indifference to the world at large. From what she gathered he had all that a lord of his stature might ask for - the reigning beauty of the season, the Lady Rosalie, was his professed mistress, he had a lavish circle of sycophants, an esteemed position in fashionable society, a cluster of old friends. And yet...

"He's batshit crazy, he is," one of the body-slaves put it most concisely. He began to towel her hair dry roughly.

_Its all a facade, _Bella thought. She had seen it in his eyes when he had tried to bore into hers.

"Them great lords," the other slave agreed, shaking his head. "I heard he has a tub of solid gold and the Lady Rosalie lies in it with him, bathed in milk and virgin's blood to keep her skin soft and supple." The two relished this richly-embroidered lie in silent pleasure. No doubt in the next retelling it would be embellished so that the Lady Rosalie and her lover were drinking potions of powdered pearls.

Excited perhaps unbearably by the thought of the Lady Rosalie's white skin, one of the slaves made a grab for her breast. "Master'll sting us hard if he finds out," the other objected.

"And how's he to find out? She can't very well talk, can she?" To emphasize his point the slave twisted her nipple, leering smugly in her face. She stared at him blankly, as though she were an eternity away. Let him do what he wanted. She had endured worse.

"She's a cold fish," the slave said sulkily, somewhat unnerved by her lack of reaction. He let her go. "She'll suit him, I s'pose."

The other laughed. "There's only one use a pretty pet like her can have for her mouth. And its not talking, neither."

They knotted the sash of red silk, stamped with the gold crest of Clan Cullen, around her hips. But for that she was naked, but it would do. What need had a plaything for anything more?

* * *

**A/N: I've never written anything of this type before, so I apologize to my old readers if this isn't exactly the style you're comfortable reading. **


End file.
